Catfishing: Have You Done It? Has It Been Done to You?

With the Manti Te'o story and the new focus on the "Catfish" movie (spoiler alert if you don't already know about it).....

...there's a lot of talk about this concept - especially the version where someone meets online and thinks they've met a guy/girl only to find out the opposite.

Of course, there are other cases (JT Leroy, the case Armistead Maupin based The Night Listener on, etc) out there too.

Curious if anyone has experienced this...or...if you're so bold to admit it....have you done this to someone? And why?

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 34

02/05/2013

And BTW, I will admit to a tiny bit of it online, but only to get a dude's nude photo on Craigslist.

It would have never occurred to me to take it farther than a simple e-mail or message.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 1

02/04/2013

Catfish was fiction.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 2

02/04/2013

Missy is not logged on right now.

But I can tell you, she is a major catfisher.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 3

02/04/2013

I used to correspond on email with an old high school friend, but it quickly became clear that his wife was writing all the emails.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 4

02/04/2013

It would break my heart if most posters here said they did. I'm hearing this show is mostly gays and fat chicks who are deceiving people.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 5

02/04/2013

Never done it, never been a victim of it. I love hearing about it though. Fascinating to me how the heart and mind work and often ignore the obvious.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 6

02/04/2013

My younger brother pulls his "catfish" shit. I worry that one day he'll get into trouble or be physically harmed because of it. He's got a genius IQ, and that fact has gone to his head. He thinks because he is smart, then that mean he's smarter than everyone else. So he pulls all kinds of shit on people for shits and giggles. He's also very insecure.

He'll wind up learning the hard way, and I can only hope he doesn't wind up in prison or in the hospital because of his antics.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 7

02/04/2013

We called it roleplaying in my days.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 8

02/04/2013

Well, before there were webcams, it was much easier to do. You would - or maybe you wouldn't - be surprised at how eager straight guys are to show their cocks to someone online. And, you;d be surprised how dumb some people are.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 9

02/04/2013

Most of the people here pretended to be straight in their teenage years. Some of them married women and carried the theme forward for 30 years.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 10

02/04/2013

I was the victim, years ago. I started a conversation with someone in an aol sex chat room -- aol, i know. I told you it was years ago -- and we continued the conversation via email. "Chris" and I wrote these thousand page letters to other, all the time, and, I admit, I kind of fell in love with him. He was smart, well read, funny. After many months of correspondence, we agreed to meet. I got a table at a restaurant, and waited for him. And waited. And waited. I noticed another guy, also sitting alone, reading the same obscure book "Chris" told me he was in the midst of. This guy was NOTHING like whom he said he was. He was fat. Unattractive. Much older than he said. I confronted him there, but he denied it. He wrote me a letter that night, claiming that it was, indeed, him, and he had led me on that whole time. I felt stupid, and have never trusted anyone online since then.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 11

02/04/2013

It's been done to me. A guy on another social web site stole a picture of another guy and took it as his own. When it was found out that those were not his photos, everyone came after him.

It really came as a surprise to me that someone would do something like this, but I've always been pretty much suspicious of him. The photos were of a guy who was socially active and handsome. Would a guy this socially active spend so much time online? And he rarely added more photos.

I guess lesson learned, all the good guys rarely spend that much time online. The guys who spend a lot of time online, there almost always something defective about them. They are either physically unattractive, have no social skills or anything to offer others, or are unemployed.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 12

02/04/2013

I have. I created a profile on Christian mingle asking for someone to help me pray the gay away. Weeks and weeks of entertainment. I couldn't even answer all of the replies I got in the first week.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 13

02/04/2013

It's easy to feel sorry for the victims of that show, but the more you watch it you eventually come to see how shallow they are. They claim to be so in love with the person they have an on-line relationship with, but it's really their looks that drew them in. When the person turns up fat, older, ugly and broke...they're suddenly no longer "in love."

They try to play it off that they want nothing more to do with the person because of the deception, but it's really because they didn't get the gorgeous model they were hoping for. Serves them right for being deluded enough to think that a perfect 10 would need to go on-line trolling for dates with strangers who are just ordinary Joes.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 14

02/04/2013

R14 That's very true. From what I've witnessed online love is all about looks. No matter how much someone claims to "love" someone, it is only lust and nothing more.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 15

02/04/2013

R14 This is one of the reasons I no longer like social web sites, nowadays I spend more time on facebook and datalounge. You said it right no good guys would go online looking for dates, they'd have a lot of people who wanted to date them in real life. Never believe people online.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 16

02/04/2013

A college friend of mine was in Catfish type situation a few years back. She is in a wheelchair due to an accident that happened when she was 13. She dated non-disabled guys for during high school and college. Another friend of hers encouraged her to try a disabled singles dating site. She joined, made a profile, and put pics up. She chatted quite a bit with a guy who had several pics up. He told her that he lived in Georgia and had been injured in motocross. My friend moved to California and she freaked out when she went to a Life Rolls On even and saw a picture of a disabled surfer. The guy she had been chatting with had been using the surfer's picture. My friend was freaked out about that deleted her profile and never questioned the guy that she been chatting with. She thought it was weird that someone would use the pics of a well known disability activist on a dating site.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 17

02/04/2013

[quote]The guys who spend a lot of time online, there almost always something defective about them. They are either physically unattractive, have no social skills or anything to offer others, or are unemployed.

This. I apply this same principle to message board posters who make wild claims of wealth, success and general fabulosity. People who are any of those things didn't get there by piddling around on datalounge, etc., all day bragging about their supposed superiority and belittling others. It just isn't the profile of a successful, secure person.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 18

02/04/2013

I was catfished too in 1994 in the early days of AOL.

Internet chatting was new to me, and I was still smarting from the end of a 4-year live-in relationship. I started chatting with this individual who was moving to DC (Captain X said he was active-duty military and being reassigned). We exchanged several weeks of emails and many phone calls (this was before the time of skype).

Just before he was to arrive at Dulles (where I was supposed to pick him up) I received an email from someone else. Apparently he was carrying on these 'relationships' with 6 different men in DC. 5 of the 6 of us thought there was a possible love connection and that we were the only ones; one just wanted sex. I was the only one of the 6 who was sent flowers from Captain X.

He ended up being a real-ish person (real photo), but with a non-military past. He was not moving to DC - just visiting for 2 weeks and wanted a free place to stay and fuck.

One good result is that I learned in 1994 that people lie on the internet.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 19

02/04/2013

1) No. Except as a parody I once put an ad up on CL with every cliche I could imagine piled in: Straight jock, girlfriend away, did something once in his flat, used "brah" and "dude" a lot. Ridiculously hot pic. I didn't think anyone would take it seriously, but some did.

2) Not that I know of, but that's not saying much. I have corresponded with people who were reluctant to meet in person.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 20

02/04/2013

A lot of people want to be loved and perhaps have difficulty handling their feelings in person. The internet lets them overcome this.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 21

02/04/2013

I met a guy in the UK through twitter and he was crazy about me. He was real enough but the operative word was that he was crazy - insane crazy. He wanted a long-distance relationship and I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I told him the only reason I wasn't interested was because of the distance - not because he really wasn't my type. I eventually had to stop communicating with him because he was so obsessed. He would record music for me and send me gifts and, if I said anything about just being friends, he would get on twitter and tell the world how his life was over because the love of his life didn't love him back.

After I broke off communications, he begged me to talk to him again and I relented, but I insisted that it was friends only. One day, he emailed me that he had decided to move to NYC to be with me and he had already applied to schools, etc. I hit the ceiling and cut off all communications again.

During the time we were chatting, he had mentioned he had lied about something in the past but he never mentioned what happened. Recently, I decided to google him and found out that he had created quite the scandal by calling himself a baron and a member of a famous family. He had claimed he was very rich and had started a couple of charitable foundations.

He had websites for the charities and had created wiki pages for himself, the charities, and his fictional father. He had a blog on Huffington Post and was creating a bit of a stir. He was even mentioned in an article in the Washington Post regarding a $2.5 million donation he had supposedly made to Haiti relief, and he had been quoted by Reuters. He also claimed to have worked for UNICEF in Africa. I think he had carried on with this ruse for close to five years before being discovered.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 22

02/04/2013

Wow, Ciaran. That's intense.

Crazy!!!!!

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 23

02/04/2013

Yes, it happened to me. I trusted this person, and he said he was too ugly to send a picture, when he kept promising he would. I will never, ever trust anyone again. Especially if they say they are from texas. (no offense to texas)

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 24

02/05/2013

I befriended someone in a chat forum. Six or so of us got quite friendly over a few years. The guy I befriended had a sad history, or so he said. He was young,suffered from disabling health issues, had had a rough childhood. The whole thing is too detailed to go into, but eventually it involved hospitalizations, during which a friend emailed health reports. Eventually he sort of fell out with each of the other members of the group. We continued to keep in touch, but sporadically. There were always niggling doubts about him, but I continued to keep in touch, his plight touched me.

After about three years, he seemed to be doing ever more poorly. Our contacts grew further and further apart. Then my occasional texts got no reply. I had the email address of the friend who once emailed health reports, but never contacted him.

I remained friends with two of the original group. We have met on a few occasions and continue our online friendship. All of us can't believe that he spent almost three years posing in such detail, but who knows? He never asked for money or any tangible thing other than our time.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 25

02/05/2013

What makes you think the guy was lying, r25 - just that he stopped responding? If he was doing ever more poorly with his disabling health issues, it seems just as likely that he died or something.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 26

02/05/2013

R26

Whenever he was unable to reply, a friend of his knew about our little chat group and kept me abreast of his progress. Several times the friend kept me posted over a period of weeks. I think this friend would have contacted me had he died or if he were unable to communicate himself.

I felt he knew how to get in touch with me (we texted back and forth frequently), and that I was genuinely concerned about him. At the end I texted him once a month over a 4 month period, nothing. Another friend in the group emailed him, nothing.

If he were genuine, it is possible he just no longer wanted to continue, or didn't have the energy to do so. I guess I will never know.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 27

02/05/2013

Not in a romantic way, but I have a weird feeling that someone I met in a forum and with whom I have exchanged many emails with is not who she says she is. I have no proof of this and the person she says she s does exist though she has very little info about her online. I don't really know why I'm suspicious but something about her feels off to me. Is there a way to tell where emails are being sent from?

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 28

02/05/2013

I got catfished by someone when I was 16 chatting online. He sent me a picture of a really cute guy, we chatted for months (lived in different cities) and I think I kind of fell in love (more probably lust). Eventually he fessed up and sent me real pictures. Totally not my type. But we did meet oneday and we are still friends today. He's not the most stable person in the world though.

One of my ex's got catfished big time. He met someone from another country, fell in love, bought tickets and planned a trip to meet him. Just before he was due to leave this asshole disappeared. He still went on the trip but I can imagine it was a bit strange.

The whole catfish thing seems alot harder to pull off today, with Facebook and Skype. When it was just correspondence, easy peazy lemon squeezy.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 29

02/05/2013

You want to go digging into someone's personal life because you have a "weird feeling," R28? Have you given this person money or gifts?

Wouldn't it be simpler to cease all communications with her and let it be?

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 30

02/05/2013

bumpy bumperson

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 31

02/05/2013

r5 - Well, the married straights who are catfishing are not likely to volunteer to appear on a reality show, are they? Particularly if Daddy is fishing for girls his daughter's age.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 32

02/05/2013

I remember when people could put their email addresses on the DL. I still miss that option.

by Cyrano de Whothefuck

reply 33

02/05/2013

Back in the day when gay.com had busy chat rooms, a hot new chatter comes in. Well the pic he had in his profile was already being used by a regular chatter. It was hilarious as the 2 queens were screaming, each claiming that pic as theirs. Neither of them could prove it however. Both profiles were gone with in days.

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